


chasing petals

by alicewaslost



Category: The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani
Genre: F/M, Flowers, Friendship, Oneshot, Pining, idk I thought it was cute when I wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29793150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicewaslost/pseuds/alicewaslost
Summary: “Do you ever get tired of this?” She lays on her back, hands up to her eyes to shield from the sun.Tedros chews his lip, “Tired of what?”“I don’t know, everything being the same all the time.”-Tedros is a teenage artist. Agatha is his muse.
Relationships: Agatha/Tedros (The School for Good and Evil)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	chasing petals

This is how it all began.

Tedros sits on the sill of his window, overlooking the hazy sky of coastal dusk. Night will arrive in minutes, blanketing the nieghborhood in inky darkness.

He rubs his brow which is still sticky from a day in the beating sun. From somewhere down the street, the smell of barbeque and corn wafts up to his perch and he inhales the smell with vigour. Downstairs, his father is passed out on the couch, reeking of booze and tobacco. The fridge is empty and Tedros’s stomach has been grumbling for the past hour, but his father would be upset to see him leaving to get food at such a late hour.

Across the street there is a house. It’s a towering Victorian-style, decades old with chipped purple paint and a deep gray trim. For years it had been unoccupied, marked by small red flags in the yard and a white sign, but now the sign is gone. As are the flags.

One of the windows is pushed up and Tedros squints to see inside it. The distance is far, but not too far, and he can make out the figure of a person, hunched over something. Their face is barely visible, masked by shadows.

Absently, he traces the figure with his eyes, his fingers unwittingly marking their outline into the skin of his leg.

They’re tall, about as tall as he is, feminine by the curve of their body and they have a distinct dome of hair shielding their face.

From where Tedros is sitting, they look mystic and extraterrestrial, and he leans forward over the yard, hoping they could tilt their head just barely into the light…

When they do, he nearly topples back into his room.

It  _ is _ a girl and she is bent over reading something, black hair now tucked behind an ear and eyes downturned to the page in front of her. The barest hint of a smile plays on her lips and Tedros awkwardly diverts his eyes away from her.

This moment feels personal, like he is intruding upon something private that no one is meant to see.

But he has to look back, he  _ has _ to look at her.

Now that night has fallen, she twinkles under the glow of the moon. He pictures her dancing among the stars, silhouetted by pure light. She matches their intensity and shines, every inch of herself luminant and suspended amongst the heavens. 

She is bright and shining and smiling

And she is everything.

_ (portrait: the girl who hypnotises the stars) _

Without taking his eyes off of her, his hand grasps at his desk nearby, gripping his sketchbook and pencils. He draws her slowly, trying to capture every inch of the picture that still lingers in his mind. On the page, she is cubic and jagged, like a warped star. Her eyes wide and her lips parted, she looks celestial, like some sort of shattered god. The milky way unfurls behind her, swirling dangerously as if trying to drag her into it.

Tedros likes to imagine she would like it if she saw it.

Not that she ever would.

There is little beauty where they live. In the morning, Tedros knows he will return to the life of the blissfully mundane. In the real world, he is failing English and his only companions are the pages in front of him. Linoleum and LEDs, stale beers and hairspray, meaningless promises and worthless friendships.

But now he drowns in the light of the mysticism that comes with the unfamiliar. Now his heart glows with the radiance of the vision before him. Now the moon pales in comparison to the light that is flickering in his chest.

For a moment, Tedros forgets how to breathe, how to do anything. All that matters is the sight across from him.

It is in the same moment, his heart implodes.

In a second slower than a hundred years, the star girl looks up from her page and stares him directly in the eye. 

He is startled out of the elaborate life, the one that has already grown roots and now lives inside his head among the paintings he is too scared to share.

It’s like she can see them all.

Her eyes are big and round like planets and Tedros prays to any god he knows that the darkness is able to shield him from her orbit, that the moonlight is friendly enough to grant him the protection he needs.

He nearly falls off of the windowsill in pure relief when she looks away, as if the entire encounter never occured.

Tedros sits frozen for a few minutes more, waiting for the penultimate point when she looks back at him again, but she doesn’t. She just continues reading, head low, face now covered by her hair.

Silently, he slips back into his room, but the image is still bored into his head: Her big eyes meeting with his own, pulling every inch of himself to the surface.

Tedros shudders at the notion and shuts the window, letting thoughts of her disappear with the night sky.

* * *

They speak for the first time the next day.

The sun has just begun setting and the sky is painted a harmonious rainbow of yellows and pinks and oranges.

The sounds of children’s squeals echo down the street and he can barely see their figures which chase each other up and down the sidewalk. He is rolling garbage cans down the driveway when he hears her voice.

“I saw you yesterday.”

He whirls and she is standing there behind him. She  _ is _ tall, about the same height as Tedros and the features of her face are sharp and angular, something he hadn’t noticed yesterday in the waning light. 

The girl stares at Tedros promptly, and he doesn’t answer. His throat is suddenly dry.

“You were watching me last night.”

The color drains from Tedros’s face, “I didn’t- I was just-”

“It’s alright, I just wanted you to know that I saw you.”

Tedros gulps down the butterflies that are rising with bile in his throat, “You don’t think I’m creepy?”

She shuffles her feet a bit and laughs, “Kinda, but we all watch something sometimes.”

“What do you watch?” He blurts. Tedros regrets the words the second they leave his mouth, especially when she tilts her head and peers at him curiously.

“I’m… not sure. No one has ever asked me that before.”

Tedros hopes she watches him.

Up close, her eyes are somehow more marvelous than they had been last night. They are warm and brown like the earth and there are small flecks of gold hidden in them like buried treasure. He tries in vain to memorize every inch of her so he can draw her in his mind over and over again.

“What’s your name?” She asks.

“Tedros,” He answers.

“Mine’s Agatha,” she pauses a second before speaking again, “Do you want to come flower hunting with me? I was about to go in a few minutes.”

Tedros can feel the blush rising on his cheeks before it even appears. He nods and she beams then says a few more things after that, but he is too exhilirated to hear her. It is only when she disappears back into her house to fetch a coat when he regains focus and is able to move again. Rather reluctantly, he cracks open the front door and calls to his father that he’ll be out before he slips on some shoes and meets her under the lamplight.

She turns to look at him and her jacket is black with about a million pockets, for hiding all the flowers that blossom on the ground and all the stars that twinkle in the night sky. There’s a camera in her hand, an old-fashioned film kind for capturing the wonders of nature that lie in her wake.

Agatha catches his eye and Tedros’s heart thumps with the intensity of the sun, glowing and burning under her gaze.

She grabs his hand and they escape into the darkness like two flower petals, floating on the wind.

* * *

Tedros learns a lot about her over the course of the night.

He learns that they go to the same high school and are in the same grade. He learns that her best subject is English, but what she’s really interested in is flowers. He learns that it’s just her and her mother living in the Victorian across the street, and that she has a cat that hisses at all the neighborhood kids. 

He also learns that he likes her.  _ He likes her a lot. _

Agatha is in front of him now, crouched down over a clump of red flowers, camera poised for the picture. Once is it taken she leans down and runs a finger over the petals. “They’re anemones,” she glances up at Tedros, “Do you know the story behind anemones?”

Tedros shakes his head and she continues, “They are said to be named after Adonis who was a mortal, but was loved by both Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, and Aphrodite, goddess of love. He chose Aphrodite and became her lover, but one day when Adonis was out hunting he was gored by a wild boar.”

Tedros is fascinamted by the story and enamoured at how her words are so effortless, as if she’s reading something from a page, “Aphrodite hears his cries and comes running to save him only for it to be too late and he dies in her arms. Red anemones sprang from the places where her tears fell and they are forever stained by her heartbreak.”

She shifts her feet and stands, but not before plucking one of the flowers, “They’re said to bring luck and protect against evil and when the petals close it’s supposed to rain soon.”

“In mythology, so many flowers were created by the gods for their lovers. Anemones, sunflowers, hyacinths, violets…”

Tedros thinks he would create a flower for Agatha if he could. For her he’d create a million flowers.

Agatha looks at Tedros who is standing awkwardly beside her, forcing him to drag himself back to the present. He quickly diverts his eyes to the ground and she twists the flower’s stem in her hands. “You don’t talk very much, do you?”

He considers it, and nods. Behind her, the sky has started it’s journey behind the horizon, painting the sky chock full of colors. Azure and violet and orange and magenta.

( _ portrait: when god goes outside the lines) _

“You should tell me about yourself, I feel like I’ve been talking about me this entire time.” She giggles a little which makes him smile. 

He looks up and their eyes meet for a second, “I like to draw,” he offers.

She runs the petals over her nails, “Can I see some of your drawings?”

“No”, Tedros blurts and she fidgets awkwardly as he scrambles to save the moment, “It’s not because of you, it’s because a lot of my drawings are-” 

He freezes and she peers at him, curiosity twinkling in her eyes.

“A lot of your drawings are what?”

He’s never admitted this to anyone before, but now that he’s started, he sees no sign of stopping.

“They’re in my head,” the words come out in a single breath, “I paint in my head. A lot of the time.”

She frowns, “All of your paintings are in your head?”

Tedros shakes his head, “Not all of them. Sometimes I put them in my sketchbook.”

“What was the last thing you painted in your sketchbook?”

“You.”

He grimaces, glad that the shadows are dark enough so she can’t see his face. He hates the way she can pull out every secret inside of him, even the ones he hasn’t exposed to anyone before. He thinks she probably finds him even creepier now, if that was even possible.

“You draw  _ me _ ?”

The air between them is silent and Tedros has forgotten how to speak.

“Do you think you will show them to me someday?” She inquires. There is no disgust or awkward kindness in her voice, only curiosity.

A beat passes and his eyes flick up to hers. She is studying his face.

“I think so,” he says quietly. He is surprised she can even hear it.

“That’s enough for me,” Tedros feels Agatha inch closer to him, but it’s like roots have planted him to the ground and he cannot move. He feels her hand loop around his head and place the red anemone behind his ear. He sees her smile and then turn away, making her way to the next flowers.

Something wild and flourishing makes its home in his chest. Green roots grow over his lungs and take over his ribcage; crimson flowers sprout from them, petals swaying in the wind. For a moment, Tedros feels like he can barely breath.

_ (self-portrait: alive) _

He remains there stagnant for a while, waiting until his breath has returned and Agatha’s shadow is in the distance.

When he finally regains movement, Tedros reaches up to his ear. His fingers brush the red flower. 

Warmth lingers from her touch on the petals just as it does on his heart.

With wary trepidation, he picks up his feet and follows after her, careful that the flower does not slip.

* * *

Tedros speaks to her again on the beach.

The past couple weeks have slipped through his fingers like a silk handkerchief. At night, he waits outside Agatha’s house for when they can slip into the forests and get lost in the flowers. She picks him the prettiest blossoms she can find and he carries her polaroids for her. In the day, school inches by slower than he would've ever thought possible, so he paints the pictures in his mind of the two of them, wandering the forests under the stars.

Crush isn’t a big enough word for how he feels about her.  _ Love _ isn’t a big enough word.   
  
If Tedros was a smarter man he might say soulmate.

He can hear her approach even before he turns around. In their time together, he tries to memorize every piece of Agatha: How her eyes light up when she finds a new flower, how her lips curl into the smile when she sees him, how a red rash creeps up her neck every time their hands brush. The patterns of her steps are just as recognisable, each footfall slight and unsure. 

“What are you looking at?,” Agatha’s voice echoes from beside him.

Tedros curls his toes in the sand and smiles. He looks over at her and she is looking back at him. Their noses are just inches apart and he can feel her breath on his lips. 

Tedros blinks, surprised. He doesn’t know if they’ve ever been this close before.

Without looking, without thinking, without breathing, his mind paints a picture of her on its fabricated canvas. The faint blush on her cheeks, the curve of her lips, the mischievous glimmer in her eyes, all framed by an impossibly blue sea.

The waves rise, colored a brilliant aquamarine that sweeps up her hair and speckle it with coral. 

_ (portrait: the girl who runs the oceans dry) _

It takes him a second to realize she’s still awaiting an answer.

“Now I’m looking at you.”

Agatha scoffs and sits in the sand. “Pretty sure you never stop,” she teases and Tedros sits beside her, ducking his hand into his arm, feigning exhaustion, to hide the red flush that just spread across his face.

“Do you ever get tired of this?” She lays on her back, hands up to her eyes to shield from the sun.

Tedros chews his lip, “Tired of what?”

“I don’t know, everything being the same all the time.”

The disappointment in her voice is devastating, and Tedros feels woefully forgotten, confined to a half circle of hell that has been designed solely for him.

“What about me?” he mumbles, sitting back on his forearms and trying not to let the hurt seep into his voice.

“ _ Other _ than you,” She squeezes his arm and he feels veins of warmth spanning from where she touches.

“What about the flowers?”

“The flowers are pretty, but there are prettier flowers all over the world,” She stretches her arms, almost hitting Tedros’s back, “You don’t ever want to travel and leave this place?”

“I guess I’ve never thought about it before.”

She snorts, “Oh yeah, because you have your drawings that you can escape into.”

Tedros smarts as his pride dwindles. He tries to make up for it with the first interesting thought that rushes to his head

“Do you want to see them?” It slips out like a lily on a waterfall, and he knows the second he hears it that there is no taking it back.

Suddenly Agatha is completely alert, her eyes exhilirated and alive. “Of course.”

Tedros hesitates before pulling the sketchbook from his bag. He has nothing to lose and at least she cares enough to be curious.

This is followed by an onslaught of crippling doubt: What if she thinks it’s creepy? What if she didn’t want to talk to him anymore? What if she doesn’t like them?

It was all becoming a little too much.

He glances back at Agatha who sits on her legs now, eyes wide and expectant. The words of disappointment die on his lips when she reaches around him, honey in her eyes, and prys the sketchbook from his fingers.

If Tedros had any control of himself, he would stop her, but it was like she had melted his vocal cords and now they pooled at the bottom of his stomach like hot wax, burning holes in his composure. 

Her fingers run down the worn pages like drops of water and Tedros studies her face, trying to memorize every pore, every feature, every sideways glance before she strips him of her wonderful, wonderful company.

He’ll be so lonely without her.

Every bone in his body is on fire when she flips open the pages and freezes on the drawing of herself, suspended in the stars. Every inch of his flesh is burning when her eyes fix on her painted face, recognizing the telltale features that are nearly masked by her surreal cubist self. Every muscle in arms tremble when she looks back up at him, mouth open and her eyes glazed over in shock.

“Is this…” Her voice wavers, and she swallows, “Is this me?”

_ No _ , Tedros’s mind whispers,  _ Just say no. _

“Yes.”

She turns back to it, eyes roaming the celestial image.

Tedros feels nothing but panic now.

“I- It’s okay if you don’t like it. It’s nothing personal, honestly. I draw pictures of everyone and you’re hardly the first to-”

“Shut up,” her finger presses to his lips, silencing him.

Agatha stares at it for a second more before speaking again.

“I look  _ fucking _ amazing.”

Tedros is stunned speechless. For all his thinking, he comes up with no answers.

“You’re the most talented person I’ve ever met. Most talented person I will  _ ever  _ meet,” Agatha sputters before looking back up at Tedros, “Is this how I look in your head?”

He has to tell himself to nod and she closes the sketchbook, pressing it back into his chest.

For a second that’s how they stay, her hand over his heart, his eyes locked on hers, his mind raging to process everything that had just happened.

He wonders if she can feel his heartbeat.

He hopes so.

Then the unexpected happens and Agatha leans toward him, planting a kiss on his tanned cheek. The touch blossoms, turning Tedros inside out and upside down and every other way that he can possibly imagine. She presses her face into his chin in a lopsided hug and he can feel her eyelashes brushing against his neck. She’s oddly warm, so warm Tedros wants to hold her forever until he glows warm as well.

“Thank you,” she whispers into his collarbone, and Tedros can do nothing but sit there. 

Butterflies swirl his chest, stealing away his breath and his heart, wrapping them up nicely in a present. He would wait until the mountains crumble to dust and the ocean dries to a desert and time slows to nothingness if it meant she would hold him like this. He would do anything if it meant he could be hers.

He would destroy himself over and over again if she could love him the way that he loved her.

( _ self-portrait: awaiting my eternal destruction) _

* * *

Two weeks later, Tedros wakes up to the most cliché scene imaginable.

There are pebbles being thrown at his window. They rattle the glass as he wipes his eyes, bleary from sleep, and goes to open it.

Agatha is below him, rocks in her hand and dark hair a rat’s nest.

She glows when she sees his face slide open the window.

“Agatha!” Tedros says, almost forgetting he needs to be quiet, “It’s nearly one!”

“The moon is out!” She whisper-shouts back, “And no clouds! The moonflowers are going to be blooming!”

She is in her pajames, so Tedros doesn’t bother putting on real clothes. He sneaks out of the house in sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, and Agatha laughs when she sees him creeping out the front door.

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand.

“Where are we going?”

“Down to the ocean!”

She tugs him along and electricity buzzes from where their hands meet. Every atom in Tedros’s body buzzes to life, all neon colors and flashing lights and panicked wiring.

When their running slows to walking Agatha peers at Tedros, squinting like she’s trying to recall a distant memory. “Do you still have that flower I gave you? The anemone? The one I put on your ear from the first time we went flower hunting?”

Tedros does. He pressed it into the back of his sketchbook the night she gave it to him. He looks at it every night, just before he falls asleep.

“I think so.”

She smiles, “I’m sure it’s all brown and shriveled by now, but you have to hold on to it. It’s a token of our friendship, just in case you ever forget about me.”

Tedros doesn’t think he could forget about her if he tried. Her image is about as prominent in his mind as the moon is in the night sky, but he nods. It’s a gentle reassurance to what he already knows.

They stumble down the empty city streets and Agatha fumbles for her flashlight in her jacket with the endless pockets. 

With the light to guide them, they race hand-in-hand to the seaside, just before the shoreline where foliage blocks the sight of the moon.

There’s a small meadow, hidden and forsaken by the rest of humanity that is lined with wisteria and jasmine. There are clumps of white flowers, their petals open and tilted towards the moon.

He’s never seen this place before and can’t help but wonder how Agatha found it.

She is already among the flowerbuds, kneeling to capture the image on her camera.

Tedros lets his fingertips brush across the pearly petals of the open blossoms as Agatha leans her face in to smell them. “Why are they called moonflowers?” he inquires.

Tedros is pretty sure he knows why, but he can’t help asking. 

Agatha gives him a sidelong glance that practically drips with intellectual superiority. “They’re called moonflowers because they blossom under moonlight. It’s kinda self-explanatory.”

“Oh yeah, obviously,” Tedros is thankful for the darkness when it covers the blush and subsequent smile that spreads across his face when Agatha snorts.

After a few minutes, she lays down on the grass, much like she had when the two of them laid on the beach. Looking back on the moment now, Tedros think they feel like two different worlds. In the sunlight, everything is light and natural. In the moonlight, he has to contain himself from telling her all his secrets.

He lays beside her, both of their backs pressed into the ground. She points to the stars above them, tracing figures with her fingers.

An hour later:

“How many constellations do you know?” she asks.

“Not many,” Tedros had never felt the need to have knowledge on a topic so esoteric until now.

“Neither do I,” she sighs as if speaking of forced admission.

The silence between them is louder than any voice and Tedros can feel his lips slipping, words ready to bubble out of his mouth like they always do when he is around Agatha, but it is her voice that interrupts the arcane quiet.

“My mother always says that night-blooming jasmine makes you reveal all your secrets.”

Tedros hopes in his heart of hearts that this is true. He wants to know Agatha’s secrets. He wants to pull them apart at the seams and see what makes her tick.

“Do you have any secrets Tedros?”

“Plenty,” he murmurs.

“Could you tell me some?”

“Only if you tell me yours.” 

“A secret for a secret then.” Out of the corner of his eyes, Tedros can see her wringing her hands which lay in her lap, “You have to go first though.”

“Alright,” Tedros pauses to think for a moment. There are so many things he can say and he doesn’t want to mess this up. _ What is something awkward, but slightly charming about himself that he wouldn’t be embarrassed to share? _

“I watch people sometimes.”

_ That was definitely not it. _

Beside him, Agatha snorts. “You told me that already. You told me that on the very first day we spoke.” Tedros feels his ears start to warm to unprecedented temperatures.

“Do you still watch me?” she asks and Tedros’s heart skips a beat.

_ In all the ways that are mortifying to admit. _

It’s never anything too intimate like looking through her bedroom window, but he watches her walk down the sidewalk. He watches her kiss her mother on the cheek before school. He watches her during English class, brows furrowed as she reads. He thinks,  _ I’d like to know you more. I’d like to know every part of you _ .

“Sometimes,” Tedros admits quietly, and before she can question it any further, flicks his hand “Okay, your turn.”

Agatha takes a second to think and Tedros hopes she reveals something equally humiliating. He barely hears her when she mumbles her words, almost incoherently, “I don’t know how to swim.”

_ That _ is a little surprising.

“How do you not know how to swim, we live on the beach?”

“I don’t know,” She sounds embarrassed, but Tedros can still hear her smile, “Everytime I get in water it all feels so vast and deep and hopeless. I can’t stand it, it’s terrible.”

Agatha flips on her side to look at him, “You think I’m stupid don’t you? I’ve been alive for this long and I don’t even know how to swim.”

Tedros chuckles, “I could never think you were stupid. Besides, if you want to learn I can teach you.” He tilts his head to look her in the eye, “I’m really,  _ really _ good at swimming.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to face the sky. “It’s your turn again,” she says.

He pauses for a second, trying to be a little more mindful of what he reveals. 

“I never learned how to drive. My dad said he would teach me when I was sixteen, but he never did. Your go.”

She tilts her head to look at the flowers, “Everyone at the town I lived at before here would call me a witch.”

“That’s horrible,” Tedros chews the inside of his cheek, “Last year I got suspended for a week when I stole all of the oil paints in the art department.”

At that, she laughs, “Did you paint anything good?”

He shakes his head, “No, just mind painting.”

“Like you did when you met me?” 

Tedros nods, “Now it’s your turn.”

“When I was fourteen, my friend shaved off my eyebrows and dyed my hair orange on accident.”

“That doesn’t sound like an accident.”

Agatha shrugs, “I think she meant well, but I looked horrendous for months.”

“Do you have any pictures?”

“No!” she whacks him across the chest, “At least none that you’ll ever see. Your turn again.”

“I’m still afraid of the dark,” he offers.

Beside him, Agatha wrinkles her nose, “Who isn’t?” 

“I don’t know, normal people?”

“Normal people are boring. We don’t want to be like normal people.”

She’s right. Normal people won’t change the world like Agatha and Tedros will.

“I have another secret,” Agatha says. There’s a waver that lingers in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

“Now you have to tell me,” Tedros teases, and for some unspoken reason, his heart leaps to his throat. 

The trees rustle behind them. Agatha inhales, exhales, and says, “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

Everything in Tedros’s body stutters to a stop and then restarts again.

He swallows, his heartbeat thumping loudly in his ear. His voice trembles ever so slightly when he speaks. “No one? You kissed me on the cheek earlier today.”

“I mean a real kiss, like on the lips.”

He feels Agatha turn to face him, her cheek pressing into the dewey grass and his stomach leaps.

“Neither have I,” he responds, so quietly it feels like the words will be blown away in the wind.

Tedros rolls on his side to look at her and he can feel his surroundings slip away.

Lesser men say it’s impossible to count the stars.

Tedros counts them every time he looks in Agatha’s eyes.

And when he looks at her then, shrouded in darkness, her face lit only by the dim light of the moon, he swears he can’t breathe.

Because the stars in the night sky are nothing compared to the stars in her eyes.

The wind sweeps the two of them up, whirling them together like the tails of two comets. 

Agatha’s forehead to his and their noses touch.Tedros has never been close enough to see them before, but there are constellations of freckles that line the bridge of her nose.

She’s gorgeous.

And she’s so close.

And she’s so, so beautiful.

And the stars are alive, darkness blanketing them both.

Tedros swallows his pride and fear and decides that anything, even rejection would be better than this awful, awful longing.

With butterflies in his stomach and his heart in his throat Tedros whispers, the words heavy with the weight of his entire world, “Can I kiss you?”

For a shattering moment, Agatha says nothing and everything staggers to a stop. He opens his mouth to offer an explanation, but something has stolen his lungs and the moment remains silent.

Then she leans in and presses her lips to his and everything is perfect.

All in the space of a second, he feels impossibly whole. 

She kisses like she speaks; ardent and impassioned, as if this is all she needs to survive. The calamity is breathtaking, so it is only when she pulls away does Tedros fully comprehend what has just happened.

At the same time, it lasts a lifetime and nothing at all, so it comes as no surprise when leans in and kisses her again, matching her heat and furvor with incomparable softness, like holding the petals of a glass rose. Under the moonlight, she flickers and burns to the touch, her heart just as loud as his.

Tedros wants to kiss her forever, until they are both glowing. They would twist and melt together like hot wax, molding to become one.

Accompanying this influx of feelings comes to Tedros a staggering realization.

He didn’t know when or how he discovered this, but Tedros knew he was deeply in love with Agatha.

It was funny in a way, how there was no warning, no peace before the storm, no grace period. She had his heart before he even had time to stop her.

But when your heart knows, it knows. There was no explaining it, so Tedros decided it best to dive off the cliff, hoping she could catch him before he fell.

In a matter of weeks, she had become his serendipity. He hadn’t been looking for her. He hadn’t even expected her.

But  _ damn _ was he luck to have found her.

They remain there, intertwined in each other until the sun starts its daily journey from horizon to horizon. 

Tedros knows he couldn’ve laid there forever.

Seconds, minutes, hours, lifetimes

With her, time is completely still.

But they are forced to drag themselves to the present and the pair returns to their opposite houses on their opposite streets in ethereal silence. 

Though he is exhausted, everything in Tedros’s body is alive and vibrant. His mind burns with images to draw of him and Agatha holding each other, floating high enough to touch the stars. They would sail away from this wasteland on ships made of blossoming flowers, pouring their buckets of light over everyone.

They stop on her porch and Agatha offers him a brief peck on the cheek. Stars linger on the skin she touches. 

“I like talking to you,” she whispers into his cheek.

_ I love you,  _ Tedros shouts,  _ I love you so much it consumes me whole _ .

Only what he ends up saying is, “Me too.”

“Tomorrow night?” Agatha asks, and Tedros nods. He’d see her every day until the sun bursts and swallow them whole.

As he walks back to his house, he thinks about night-blooming jasmine and starlight, how he could catch a star and crack it open so the sparking insides splatter all over his fingers. He presses his hands to his chest and glows with the idea of seeing Agatha the next day and all the days after that.

( _ portrait, self-portrait: two dreamers race into brightness) _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this all the way! I really hope you enjoyed it because it absolutely makes my day to see people reading what I write. love you all <3


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